Instead of getting demolished, this Japanese building is slowly shrinking away

If you want to get rid of a building, you’re pretty much stuck blowing it up. It’s not ideal, especially in a city where there are other structures around that could be damaged, but buildings are large, and designed to be permanent, and it’s not like you can convince them to just shrink down to nothingness — can you?

Well, a Japanese construction company is doing a pretty good job with this hotel. Instead of using explosives — dangerous in a densely populated area — it’s taking apart each floor from the inside, then sliding the building’s cap down a level, then repeating until the whole thing is gone.

It’s already dropped it from 460 feet to 260 feet tall, and in another six months it will be gone. Which is a lot less efficient than just blowing the thing into the Stone Age, and way less metal, but also a lot less noisy, dusty, and disruptive.